Cold Reign (Jane Yellowrock #11)(26)
I climbed into the Toyota’s backseat, knowing better than to call shotgun. I settled in, buckled in, laid my head back, closed my eyes, and was instantly in that strange almost-sleep where my body felt paralyzed but I was aware of everything: my own breathing, my own heartbeat, the sounds of water pattering onto the car, the permeated smells of the old women, the puppy, the mean old cat they had adopted, and a strong scent of coffee.
Aggie and her mother got into the car. I heard it turn over and felt the motion as it eased down the road. The wipers squeaked back and forth; rain tapped down softly. That precise sound of tires on wet roads filled the car, soothing, and then we traveled down a series of shell roads, which would be shining bright even in the gray light and rain. The sound of the tires changed as the shells on the roadway became sparser and the roads became progressively less maintained. I knew the moment we veered onto the two-track trail, the car bouncing into and out of potholes and over washboard ruts. I’d been here before.
As the four-by-four Toyota crawled down the ruts, Aggie again explained the ritual of going to water, unconcerned if I was listening or asleep.
In my near dream state, I heard every word, and as she spoke I drifted back into myself, feeling oddly and unexpectedly rested and free of pain. I sat up when she finished, and I stretched and decided that since she had used the same formula this time as last, I should too. “So, we go in the woods, throw up, talk to God, and go for a swim in the bayou that’s full of snakes, nutrias, and alligators.”
Aggie and her mother laughed, the sounds like water rippling over stones. “Thought you was asleep,” Uni lisi said. “We walk you through the ritual prayers.”
I hadn’t done much praying lately, in or out of church, so maybe this would help me in more ways than I had thought. When I stopped, which wasn’t often, and considered my own soul, which was never unless I had to, it was dusty and dry and scoured by winds. It was also dark as a cavern, and I suddenly worried that no soul should ever be so dark.
“Your vampire priestess, she call us today, before dawn.” Uni lisi watched me absorb this in the little mirror in the sun visor. I nodded. “She old and powerful. She know you a war woman, so we take you to water as a man, like last time,” Uni lisi said, returning to the general outlines of the last time we went to water. “After, you will be cleansed inside and out; your spirit will be open and restored. You will be ready for battle or pain or difficulty, and you will be without the shadows of the past that darken your soul.”
“We know you worship the Christian god,” Aggie said, again following the same ritual steps as before. “The old beliefs say the Great Creator made us. Some say the Creator still listens to us and some say he is gone, but all say he left three guardians to watch over us.”
I nodded, my hair rubbing loud on the seat back. Cloud-to-cloud lightning brightened the sky, lambent and gentle-looking. Around us fog closed in. Rain splattered the old car.
“In Cherokee ritual, the numbers four and seven are important,” Uni lisi said. “Four guardians of the four directions, seven when you add in the three guardians left by Unelenehi. Unelenehi, is the Great One. You call on this name when facing east. Selu was first woman, the corn mother. Her husband, first man, was Kenati. There is also the great female spirit which we call Agisseequa. But going to water is no hard and firm ritual calling on a specific god or a specific spirit. You call on who you want, who you want to lead you, who you want to clean you soul.”
The small Toyota turned into the same pine trees I remembered from before. Aggie braked and turned off the car. Uni lisi continued the narration. “This not like baptism. This a way to recognize our Tsalagiyi roots and heritage, to call on the past to lead and direct us into the future. It your ritual, the way you pray, the god or spirits you believe in. We done said what we needed to say. Come on. Sun done rose. We late.”
I bowed my head to them and murmured, “Lisi, elder of the People, and Uni lisi, grandmother of many children, thank you for taking me to water.” They each nodded regally and left the car for the rain. I peeled myself out of the car and followed them into the woods, flip-flops squelching on the rain-soaked ground.
Aggie’s hair had grown out and both women wore their hair braided, Uni lisi’s down to her hips, the thin white tresses laced with the black of the midnight sky. Their bodies moved with grace and elegance and I felt awkward and noisy in my flops.
I had worn flip-flops last time too, though for different reasons, and now the flops splattered rainwater up over me even as more rain fell through the pine needles. The trail snaked through the trees to the edge of the muddy bayou, though the water was much higher now, drowning the roots of the trees, and it moved faster than I remembered. I finally took off my flops and carried them.
We stopped and my stomach cramped with the memory of what was to come.
Aggie hung her black cloth bag from a branch above a stump and peeled off the lid from a coffeehouse travel mug. Steam curled out into the cold, winterlike air as she set it on the stump beside a small freezer bag containing a bit of native tobacco, harder and harder to find these days. She gave neither to me.
The smell in the cup was different from what I remembered. It still smelled like boiled tree limbs and lichen and pinesap, but now it also contained something more bitter. I remembered the odor and the effects of it from my last time in the sweathouse. Peyote.
Aggie opened a small thermos and poured some of the contents into the plastic thermos cup, giving it to her mother, who guzzled it down and moved into the trees. Aggie drank her own dose in a single gulp and made a horrible face. She poured a third cup and handed it to me. “Drink. Purge. Then come back and drink that one, the whole thing.” She pointed at the second mug. “And follow the ritual.”